A Knight’s Enchantment (23 page)

Within the vast, high-ceilinged, smoke-filled palace kitchen, Joanna avoided the steward by stepping behind a burly spit boy. When Parvus strutted into the buttery to bully the cellar man, she hurried to a kitchen maid she knew well. Madge was slicing stale bread into trenchers, ready to use as plates for the midday meal. Her formerly acne-ridden skin glowed with health, thanks to Joanna’s unguents and suggestion of more daily fruit in her diet.

Plucking a wrinkled water pourer from its peg on one of the kitchen beams, Joanna shook it beside Madge.

“I need your help.”

“Anna!” Madge was the only one who called her that. Instants later, Joanna was enfolded into a close hug, the maid exclaiming at how well she looked. “And see the pastry cook over at that far bench? We are betrothed!”

Joanna congratulated the pair and genuinely wished them well, aware at the same time that if Parvus spotted her in the kitchens he would send her back to her chamber. “Please, Madge.” She was sorry to interrupt the maid’s wedding chatter but this next step was vital. “Can you bring me some of the best wine? I know the cellar man likes you.”

“Likes me! Tries to grope me each time we meet in the kitchen corridor, if truth be told. My Gregory says that will stop now, or he will bake Master Fletcher in a pie.”

Joanna feared to interrupt or remind her again but Madge, enlivened by this contest between admirers, thrust her knife into the rest of the loaf and said, “The best wine, you say? I may have to let him kiss me for that.”

Joanna blushed, recalling the kissing games between Hugh and herself. “Do you know who the latest prisoner is, in the donjon?”

“That creepy Frenchman who has lost his memory?”

“I thought it was another.”

“There may be, you know how these hostages change.” Madge glanced across the kitchen, flounced her skirts at Gregory the baker, and bustled round the table, mouthing, “Need the midden.”

As soon as she disappeared into the clouds of smoke that wreathed the kitchen close to the buttery doorway, Joanna realized she was still gripping the wrinkled water bag. She had forgotten to hand it over.

She leaned against the table, feeling light-headed with shame and anxiety. If she had missed such a simple thing, what else might go wrong?

Madge was already coming back. Had she been unable to kiss the cellar man with sufficient zeal? No, she was carrying a good-sized jug in both hands.

“Madge, you are a wonder!” Joanna felt herself sag with sheer relief but Madge took her by the shoulder and whipped her about like a spinning top.

“Go, that evil Parvus is shuffling over. We do not want his pestering questions. Go!”

Desperate not to drop the jug, Joanna fled from the kitchen, worrying with every hasty step that she would be called back, hauled off to make an account with the bishop himself. Instead she emerged blinking, with smoke-filled lungs and eyes, into the bailey yard.

She would have to pass the man-cages again. Was Hugh perhaps languishing in there, with the other common criminals? It was against her every instinct to walk slowly by the cages but she made herself do it, enduring the taunts and the lewd gestures.

“Hey, sweetheart, let me give you something!”

“Whore-bait!”

“Help me—”

She hurried past that section of cage, away from the blind, ruined eyes and clawing fingers. The sight of the filthy, pale prisoners shamed her, as it always did. Dared she use the
aqua fortis
on the locks to the cages? Their breakout would keep the guards busy, but what if she was caught by those reaching hands?

I cannot be a hostage again. I will not be.

She backed farther away from the cages and sped on, almost colliding with a monk carrying a book with golden clasps in her keenness to be away. His angry shouts followed her as she stepped into the black shadow of the donjon and braced herself for a possible encounter with guards.

The wine was very fine. Back in her chamber, Joanna was sorry to have to adulterate it but knew she must.

Meanwhile the mystery of the new prisoner remained. There had been no guards within the donjon when she had entered, but two had appeared as if summoned by a charm and then followed her up the stairs. She had longed to call out or sing as she reached the first-floor landing, but one guard was the man who had burned her note and he was already suspicious. She climbed the stairs in silence.

Still she did not know if the third prisoner was Hugh. What if he languished in the open-air cages, too stunned to call out? What if he, like Mercury, had lost his memory or wits in his capture?

Joanna gave the wine one last stir and tasted it. The sleeping draught had tempered its sweetness, but only slightly. “If Mercury has no memory, then I am the Queen of Sheba,” she said aloud, tapping her spoon on the jug.

“Is that why none of your potions to recover his wits would work?” asked a neat, cloaked figure from the threshold. “I had assumed as such. I passed him on because I want no blame, whenever our Mercury decides his memory is whole again. Whoever he is, when he chooses to reveal it, I think we shall all hold our breaths and bow our knees. I had not the men to guard him, else I would have kept him, but I want no earl’s army appearing outside my palace, demanding his release and determined to have vengeance.”

He pursed his lips. “A pity no one could say who he was, but sometimes a hostage is too dangerous to keep.”

“My lord.” Joanna hurriedly lifted some books off a stool and polished the stool with her skirts for Bishop Thomas to be seated. Inside her guts were churning as a prickle of wild terror swept over her body. “My lord, you grant me abundant honor by coming here.”

“The abbot and his party are at prayer. Tomorrow I am for Oxford again, so it must be today.”

Joanna dared not ask what must be today: she knew it would be nothing good. She allowed the spoon to slide back into the jug, wondering if she should give an account of why she had such fine wine in her chamber.

“This works better than ale at hiding the taste of other things,” she said quickly, deciding on a version of the truth.

He had not seen her sleight of hand with the wine but what was he doing, scanning her chamber, picking any bottles within reach off the workbench and shaking them? Swiftly she palmed the glass flask of the dangerous
aqua fortis,
spreading her fingers to hide as much of it as she could. Why was he visiting now? He had not stepped foot in the donjon for months.

Thomas pointed a ringed, gloved hand at the jug. He was robed in scarlet and blue silk again, and his ermine cloak was bright in the room. “You have the means in there to get that stubborn wretch downstairs to tell where he has hidden my relics?”

The elixir for truth—she had done nothing to make it, but now she knew there was only once answer to give. “Yes, my lord.”

“And it will work?”

“Within the half hour, or less.” The sleeping draught would certainly take hold by then. “It needs but one addition to make it complete: it is but ordinary wine without it. I chose to make it in this way so the Templar would drink with us. If he thinks we are all drinking the same.” She stopped, nervous of her tongue saying too much, and hid the
aqua fortis
behind an earthenware crock.

Her lies were met in silence. Bishop Thomas held out a hand and she placed the jug before him, praying he would not smell or recognize the sleeping draught.

“Do I smell Malmsey? That is good wine indeed. You were going to use this without telling me?”

Did he mean the wine or the potion? Joanna chose to believe he meant the latter. “I thought that if I drank with David Manhill and the guards today, and asked him one or two questions to which I know the true answers, I may establish trust with him, and know for certain that the potion is effective, my lord. Then, the next time, with your leave, I may ask more.”

“A plan of sorts.” Bishop Thomas appeared mollified. He tasted the wine and smacked his lips. “Will this also work on that new fellow in my prison, a gangling redheaded fool who claims kinship with the lords of Exeter? I have sent messengers hence to verify his claims, but though his clothes are fine, I like him not for a lord. He has no retinue and kept no state. He does not have a good horse, much less a splendid horse. A jumped-up merchant, perhaps, whose family I can squeeze for coins, but no noble.”

“Yes, my lord.” Joanna fought to cling to her composure as this blessing of news fell on her like a shower of gold.

He does not recognize Hugh. He has his enemy in his grasp and he does not know it.

Unless the bishop was deceiving her? Joanna became clammy at the thought. She dared not look too closely at Thomas, lest he sense her concern.

But why should he suspect? Who would expect a knight of the realm to submit to changes in his appearance even so far as the color of his hair and wads of padding in the cheeks of his face; to allow himself to be made a figure of ridicule?

Thomas would never do such an act, so he cannot conceive of it. Pray good nature I am right in this. Please let me not be dazzled by my own relief, and hope.

“Let us go down, then. My guards will join us there presently.”

Within the chamber? That will be too many to drug or dupe.

“My lord, if the guards remain outside and you enter to speak with my father and take wine with him, will that not be more natural? Will David Manhill not then partake of the wine more easily, he and the stranger together? Then you shall know the truth of both.”

“You are right,” said Thomas at once. “Bring the wine and cups.”

“Yes, my lord.” On her way around the workbench to collect more cups, Joanna saw the bishop distracted by her star charts and astrolabe. While he peered at both, she seized the chance to slip the flask of
aqua fortis
and the smaller bottles of her sleeping potion and its antidote into the inner pockets of her work robe. She tried to tell herself to be ready, in case the new hostage was not Hugh, but inside she already felt to be floating, light-headed with anticipation. Soon she and Hugh would be reunited.

Unless Hugh had changed toward her, like David?

She took a deep breath and tried to steady herself. “I am ready.”

Bishop Thomas surprised her then by going to the door and opening it himself. “I shall summon the guards and my dogs.” He smiled broadly at the alarm he must have spotted in her face. “My alaunts also have a nose for the truth, Joanna; they can come in with us. Now I will lead the way.”

Still smiling, he did so.

Hugh heard the bishop speaking to a guard on the first-floor landing. He could not hear the words, but a few moments later he heard the barking of dogs and the rushing of heavy bodies up the spiral staircase.

“They are coming here,” he said, wondering for an instant if Thomas would try to set the dogs on them, then dismissed the idea. Those rowdy alaunts would obey him as before, as all dogs and good beasts heeded him, so Thomas’s ploy, if ploy it was, would be in vain.

David, who had not yet left his bed, groaned and pulled the covers over his head.

“He dislikes my lord bishop and so would feign sleep,” said Solomon. “He has done so before, especially since his return from the prison pit.”

He spoke as if David was a substance, Hugh thought, rather than a man. Indeed, since David had accused Joanna of betraying the Manhills, her father had not uttered one direct word to his brother. Such a habit was good kinship, perhaps, but Hugh was frustrated by the silence between them. “You are worse than women!” he had roared at both yesterday, but it had made no difference.

“Will you not meet the fellow on your feet, man to man?” He appealed to the lump that was his brother and to Solomon, who, though sitting up, was also still abed. For what would they rise? Their food was not due for another hour.

Hugh, not yet resigned to imprisonment, had been up and pacing for hours. Resuming what he done every day, he had tried the locked door and rattled the lock and kicked at the doorjamb until his feet, even in their stacked boots, were sore. He had tried to thread his bedding through a window slit before admitting it was folly. He had peered at his jowls in his washing water, wondering if the dark stubble was showing yet through the reddened skin. He was weary of his disguise, of pretense.

Give me a sword and I will clear this place from top to bottom!

“You should rise,” he said, irritated with his despairing companions. “I have told you—we need to be ready to leave at a finger-snap’s notice.”

David rolled down his bedding to show his scowling face beneath his fair hair. “No one is coming for us. She is not coming.”

“Should the dogs not be leashed, sir?” asked Joanna outside the chamber, proving David’s assertion a lie. Solomon turned his back on David and began feeling beside his rough heap of bedding for his shoes.

Good, old man. Do it for your daughter, if not for yourself.

Hugh heard the great key clank in the lock. He stood back, too wily to make a rush and be battered afresh by the cluster of guards. Yipping with excitement, the alaunts launched into the chamber and instantly rushed to David’s bed to worry at his bedding, and David yelled.

“Stop that!” Hugh snapped his fingers and the alaunts fell back, coming to sniff his fingers and receive a friendly pat. And now Joanna was in the room beside three guards. She carried a jug and cups and stared at him as if she would know all of him afresh.

Their eyes met. How open and sultry and yearning she was: his harem girl in another master’s drab garb. He longed to strip her there and then on the spot, tear off the bishop’s proofs of ownership, and make her truly his.

Bishop Thomas, sleek as a weasel, was also staring. “You are the second man to charm my dogs. Are you a warlock, redhead?”

“Eh?” Hugh strove to think straight. What did the fellow mean? Had he seen through the disguise, or remembered Hugh Manhill’s skill with beasts? He had made a stupid mistake, there, quelling the alaunts.

“It is written that witches have red hair,” Solomon remarked, coming to his rescue. He rose and bowed to the bishop. “My lord.”

“A word.” Thomas beckoned Solomon as casually as if he were the least page, but his ill grace gave Hugh the chance to give David’s bed another kick, further rouse the despairing idiot. As Solomon stepped warily past the dogs, Hugh nodded to Joanna.

“Is that our breakfast wine, girl?”

“Yes, sir.” Her voice was as pretty, and as dry, as the substance of mercury. It gave him no clue to her feelings.

“Will you serve me, then?” He sat on a stool beside the chess table. Off to one side, Thomas was hissing in Solomon’s ear, while David aped slumber. He was tempted to fling his brother out of bed, but then heard the loud click in the lock.

Joanna, having placed the cups on the chessboard and now pouring something—
is that wine drugged?
—glanced at the door. “My lord, we are locked in!”

Is her panic real or false?

“As I instructed, I would have no interruptions.” Bishop Thomas waved off her alarm. “Do you doubt these sturdy fellows?” He glanced at the alaunts, haunting meekly by Hugh’s heels, and said nothing of them. “Pour the wine for us, girl. You.” He pointed at the shorter of the three guards. “Rouse that prisoner. I would have us all drink a toast to our good king, John.”

David wallowed half-upright on his pallet and Thomas was on him, snatching a goblet from the chessboard and thrusting it toward him.

“Drink, man, drink! Even Templars pledge allegiance to kings! Drink!” Thomas swung round, spilling part of a second cup. “You drink, too, Red-face!”

Do I trust Joanna now?

Hugh did not hesitate. He took the cup and gulped it down.

“Drink, drink!” Thomas instructed his own men in a frenzy of excitement. “I would know all, so drink!”

David had not taken the cup, so Thomas flung the contents in his face while the guards hastily swallowed and drank.

“More!” Thomas snapped his fingers at Joanna. “More for the Templar, and
you
hold his head and
you
make him drink!”

“Please, my lord—”

“Silence!” Thomas bawled, overriding Joanna’s protest. “I will have those relics now! They are mine, for the Almighty brought the Templar to me! What are they, man? A part of the true cross? A lock of our savior’s hair? Tell me now, while you still have a tongue!”

David, the lees of wine dripping from his face, shook his head. The guards put down their empty cups and nodded to each other.

“Seize him! Hold him! I would know.”

Two guards stepped closer to David and then one rubbed at his eyes while the other clutched at his belly. They tottered another pace and then sank to the floor, the third guard slumping down with them but falling across Hugh’s pallet.

Thomas opened his mouth to scream and Hugh punched him hard in the face. The bishop of West Sarum crumpled in a gaudy heap on the floor and lay as still as his guards.

“Fine wine, that,” said Hugh. “What was in theirs?”

“Treble-strength sleeping potion in the bottom of their cups. I had no means to stir it properly, but I knew it would work. I have the antidote here, but had no means to give it you, so I had to know which goblet to give you, without the sleeping draught.”

Answering, Joanna was already hurrying for the door.

“That was risky,” David said, wiping his face on a bedsheet. “What if Thomas had seen the potion in the goblets?”

“I walked behind Thomas on the stairs and added it then,” Joanna said, kneeling by the lock and pulling a flask out of her baggy work gown. “We must hurry, David, or are you still in doubt of me?”

“I never doubted.” Hugh was eager to establish this point, even at the expense of some exaggeration.

“Never?” Her voice was very soft. “Had it been me, in your place—” She stopped, looking down at the flask in her hand as if she did not know what it was, and then glancing everywhere but at him.

“Come, David, let us tie up these guards and the bishop.” Solomon dragged at the Templar, compelling him to stir.

Hugh stepped over the prone figure of Bishop Thomas and knelt beside Joanna. Padding beside him, the alaunts whined.

“What must I do to help?” he asked, making his voice and manner gentle. “I know we have little time here.”

She stared despairingly at her hands. “I must feed this into the lock and let it burn, little by little. There will be foul smoke, so you must cover your nose and mouth, and I must be steady.”

She lifted her hands to him and he could seem them trembling. “Hugo, I do not know if I can do this.”

He lifted the flask from her, set it on the flags, and gathered her close. “Easy, there.” He trailed his thumb across her dark brows and lashes, feeling the cheekbone beneath her pale skin, feeling how she had lost weight in the time she had been back here. He stroked her hair, his wish to comfort warring with his desire. “I will be your surgeon here. Tell me what to do.”

“Make haste, Hugh, before more guards come.” David was changing his clothes with those of the taller guard. “A pity none of these have keys.”

That was the first comment of sense his brother had made, Hugh thought, and now he answered, “Search them in case they have something we can use. No rough stuff,” he added. For himself, he might have dispatched all three, but he knew Joanna would disapprove.

He tore a sleeve from the bishop’s robe and wrapped it about his head, picking up the flask again. Reunions were sweet and Joanna his girl with wide and dreaming eyes, but they could not woo like lord and lady in a French romance: they must get out of the donjon first. “Tell me what to do,” he said again, shaking the flask before her eyes.

“Do not do that, Hugo!”

His ploy worked: Joanna’s attention snapped back into focus and her face blazed with concentration. “Never shake or tip
aqua fortis,
’tis too dangerous! Here, give it to me!”

She shoved him aside and took the flask, tipping it to allow the liquid to slip into the door lock. A loud hissing and sizzling broke from the metal and a cloud of acrid smoke bloomed from the lock. Joanna leaned sideways, coughing, her eyes streaming, and Hugh tore a length from David’s bedsheet and wound it across her mouth and nose.

She tipped the flask a second time and more sizzling ensued. Hugh saw a trickle of something—waste metal?—weep from the lock.

“It works, keep going!” He gagged on the foul acid smoke but ignored it, pressing his shoulder to the door and pushing with all his strength. “David, help me!”

It was Solomon who came, pounding at the door with narrow fists while he shoved and Joanna poured.

With a final groan and sizzle the lock broke and their way was open. Hugh snatched the sword David had taken from the taller guard and whistled to the alaunts. “I go first,” he said. “Upend those pallets and get behind them now. There may be archers coming. I go out first and you follow only when I say. Agreed?”

David and Solomon grunted something. Joanna said only, “I have never seen a man wear a veil before. You look well in it.”

Behind his “veil” Hugh grinned, and grabbed a stool as a shield, ready for the next.